Steps to reproduce: Activate Rail Builder mode by clicking (without shift) on a rail to extend it. Place rail normally. Upon encountering obstacle, desire to use robots temporarily, and so hold shift.

Despite being visually identical to the same action in the Planner mode, it is necessary to fully stop Building and switch to Planning to use ghost override / robots--even if one wishes to then switch back to Builder mode immediately after.

rail building.png (1.05 MiB) Viewed 9443 times

There is no visible difference between Builder mode and Planner mode, but only the Planner behaves as expected.

Builder mode should respect holding shift and convert rail placement into forced ghosts while the ghost icon is visible.

Note: This is technically the behavior since 0.13, but the new ghost icon while holding shift lends further weight to the argument about user expectations. Currently, the ghost lies.

Thank you IronCartographer You opened my eyes, it is so obvious now and makes so much more sense.

changelog wrote:

Simplified rail building.
Holding shift while rail building always activates the combination of ghost-rail-building + remove-obstacles, releasing shift returns back to normal manual mode.
It doesn't matter anymore, whether the rail building started with shift or not.
This removed the possibility to do ghost-rail-building without the remove-obstacles, but since it seems to be almost useless, we consider it to be worth the simplification.

Nice, this is one of the biggest minor annoyances that are still left within the game, this would significantly reduce the learning curve for new users too (the inconsistency with other build modes is rather jarring when I first started)

This removed the possibility to do ghost-rail-building without the remove-obstacles, but since it seems to be almost useless, we consider it to be worth the simplification.

This isn't almost useless at all! It's especially good when trying to navigate through cliffs (prior to cliff explosives) or dense forest since it will find a path that actually works without relying on removing the obstacles.

If you're going to make this change, then you should extend the length of rail that can be built in one go significantly (especially given once you've started building rails, there's no need to be in range of the rails to keep building them, so it's not a gameplay but an interface matter).

This removed the possibility to do ghost-rail-building without the remove-obstacles, but since it seems to be almost useless, we consider it to be worth the simplification.

This isn't almost useless at all! It's especially good when trying to navigate through cliffs (prior to cliff explosives) or dense forest since it will find a path that actually works without relying on removing the obstacles.

If you're going to make this change, then you should extend the length of rail that can be built in one go significantly (especially given once you've started building rails, there's no need to be in range of the rails to keep building them, so it's not a gameplay but an interface matter).

Agreed. Routing around obstacles without using the ghost building mode currently is extremely annoying.

This removed the possibility to do ghost-rail-building without the remove-obstacles

Oh no.

I love being able to squeeze through and around forests without destroying trees... or being able to begin a rail placement at the main base, and just drag the entire thing across the map and finishing in the desired location.

I almost exclusively use rail planner mode, even before I have robots. It lets me quickly set everything up exactly as I want it, and then if I don't have bots, I can rapidly retrace the finished pathing I had set up. If I have bots, then they quickly handle it for me.

Maybe add a rail-planner item so we can still use the old rail planner mode?... or a setting somewhere to toggle it? You could add a menu that pops up when we right click the stacks of rail, sort of like how we edit the upgrade planner and deconstruction planner.

This removed the possibility to do ghost-rail-building without the remove-obstacles, but since it seems to be almost useless [...]

I'd agree, for trees and rocks. But there are definitely times I want to route around cliffs, either because I haven't yet set up mass production of cliff explosives, or just because I don't want to spend so many.

This removed the possibility to do ghost-rail-building without the remove-obstacles, but since it seems to be almost useless [...]

I'd agree, for trees and rocks. But there are definitely times I want to route around cliffs, either because I haven't yet set up mass production of cliff explosives, or just because I don't want to spend so many.

And let me be a person expressing a strong desire for the ability to build around trees and rocks too.

I have to agree, I'm a little leery of chiming in, really sorry if this seems like piling on but this fix is just wrong. I think there have to be better alternatives.

Here's maybe an over-the-top alternative: when a click places _any number_ of ghosts, the first one in range and of an item in the player's inventory is instead placed by the player. Manual single-item placement then becomes one case of a unified internal flow, rails aren't an exception. Q'ing on a rail always starts autoroute mode, shift toggles auto-decon same for rails and blueprints and in-hand items. If you have the items and are standing right there and want to place a ghost anyway, offload them somehow first (but the downside for forgetting is down around negligible, not nearly as bad as when you forget and your personal robots go berserk on concrete).

Thank you IronCartographer You opened my eyes, it is so obvious now and makes so much more sense.

changelog wrote:

Simplified rail building.
Holding shift while rail building always activates the combination of ghost-rail-building + remove-obstacles, releasing shift returns back to normal manual mode.
It doesn't matter anymore, whether the rail building started with shift or not.
This removed the possibility to do ghost-rail-building without the remove-obstacles, but since it seems to be almost useless, we consider it to be worth the simplification.

Fixed for the next release.

This "fix" is what we in German call a "Verschlimmbesserung". Now you cannot rotate clockwise, except in "manual" (wtf anyway, why is it even there?) mode, which is of course a joke since the length of manual mode is too short for rotation to make sense.